The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland, and Other Great Sea Disasters

by Logan Marshall

CAP TOURMENTE

Then comes Cap Tourmente, towering 2,000 feet from the water’s edge, and other massed piles of granite jutting out into the river, with the Isle of Orléans green and beautiful in the sunlight, with the St. Lawrence jewel-bright and showing glimpses of the white curtain of Montmorency Falls in the distance, with the naked, somber heights of the Laurentides to the north. Everywhere, indeed, along the north shore, from far down on the Labrador coast up to Cap Tourmente, there is this wall of mountains, like a sea of rolling rocks, cleft here and there by such recesses as Murray Bay or the Saguenay. Everywhere, also, are footprints of the early explorers. Here Cartier landed, there Champlain camped, here De Roberval is supposed to have disappeared forever between the wide walls of the Saguenay, there Pont-Gravé or Chauvin left traces of adventurous exploits.